I Am the Dance (2008)

A hollowness inside. It shakes and cracks my guts and innards, rotting and putrid.
Self-inflicted, self-drowned in alcohol and house music.

I am the bass drum. I am the high-hat.

The rhythm in my bones pops and jumbles my scattered frame with sass and insecurity.
My feet are fixed and rigid until a familiar chorus charms my lips. An invisible lover’s hands arrive on my own skin and in my hair. The wave articulates down my spine and opens my hips as it’s all forgotten and someone else comes calling out of me.

I am a drunken hot mess on the dance floor. On the stage.

I conduct the now synchronized crowd.
My arms swing high and low as I become their unified beat. Their energy and mine vibrate higher and feed each other and we swell together. In this moment we become a common destiny. Eyes close, the beat is inside and out. Bodies become superfluous and faces dissipate. The swell becomes a flight, an ascension through layers of space.

We fly.

We fly because we know how. We fly because we can. We fly against the tyranny of gravity.

In this flight we encounter ourselves.
In this flight we triumph.

We drown witches and face demonic nymph twin murderers. In these battles we see the enemy as our brother, thank him for releasing us, show no fear against his juggernaut of blades flashing into our flesh. The flight returns to earth with an impact that puts us abreast and between our enemy, sharing the colour field that we breathe in and build.

We save the moaning flock who cry and tie their shoelaces together into webs, shackled in their shared sorrow for the lost.

In this flight I am alone and together, hot and cold, the light and the dark.

I am free.

I am the dance.